Only read this if you're interested in your future. The US has shifted to a part-time economy. Better to be prepared for a changed economy than hope one will 'come back' that has no chance of doing so.
11/2/12, “Chart Of The Day: America’s Geriatric Work F(a)rce,” Zero Hedge
“The traditional excuse apologists for America’s collapsing labor force participation rate use every month is that due to “demographics” and retiring baby boomers, increasingly more old workers are no longer counted by the BLS and as a result, are skewing the labor force. That’s where they leave it because digging into details is not really anyone’s forte anymore. This would be great if it was true. It isn’t.
A month ago in “55 And Under? No Job For You” we presented visually and quite simply that of the 3.3 million jobs “created” (updated for October’s data), a gasp-inducing 3.8 million has gone to workers aged 55 and over, or the one cohort that according to conventional wisdom is retiring, and actively leaving the workforce.
How can America’s elderly workers account for more than the total? Simple:
- workers in the young (16-19) and prime (25-54) cohorts
- have cumulatively lost a whopping 1.3 million,
- with just the 25-54 age group losing 842,000 jobs
In other words, America’s elderly are not only not in a rush to retire, they are reentering the workforce (thanks to the Chairman’s genocidal savings policy which has just rendered the value of all future deposits worthless thanks to ZIRP), and in doing so preventing younger workers, in their prime years, from generating incremental jobs.
And nowhere is this more visible than in today’s jobs report. On the surface, the US generated a whopping 413,000 jobs (after generating a massive 873,000 last month) according to the Household Survey in October. That’s great, unfortunately breaking down this cumulative addition by age cohort confirms precisely what we have said:
- all the jobs are going to old workers,
- who have zero wage bargaining leverage
- (as they just want to have a day to day paycheck).
- 10.7% went to those aged 16-19 (source),
- 11.6% went to those aged 20-24 (source),
- a tiny 9.8% went to the prime age group: 25-54 (source), and
- a massive 67.8% went to America’s baby boomers: those aged 55 and over (source), and
But the most eye-opening chart is this one showing jobs in the 25-54 and 55 and over categories:
And one wonders why America’s labor force has no bargaining power, and why average hourly wages are imploding, and why nobody can afford anything anymore…
Finally, all of the above excludes previous disclosures that the bulk of jobs created in the past 4 years is
- in the part-time job category.”
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Ed. note: The left has long worked to force America into a part time economy for reasons of social justice and CO2. Coincidentally or not, things are working out as they hoped:
On June 8, 2012, Bill McKibben spoke at a conference put on by the New Economics Foundation. This Foundation seeks "to achieve social justice globally" (p. 6) by making a 21 hour work week standard. They say economic growth must be reduced to save the planet and increase equality:
"21 Hours," by the New Economics Foundation, "Why a shorter working week can help us all to flourish in the 21st century"
p. 2, "The vision"
"Moving towards much shorter hours of paid work (21 hrs. per wk.) offers a new route out of the multiple crises we face today. Many of us are consuming well beyond our economic means and well beyond the limits of the natural environment, yet in ways that fail to improve our well-being – and meanwhile many others suffer poverty and hunger. Continuing economic growth in high-income countries will make it impossible to achieve urgent carbon reduction targets. Widening inequalities, a failing global economy, critically depleted natural resources and accelerating climate change pose grave threats to the future of human civilisation."...
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1/16/11, "Recession Special: Cleaner Air," NY Times, Matthew Wald
"What the government has not mandated, the economy is doing on its own: emissions of global warming gases in the United States are down....
In part, the Great Recession has been good for something.
“The recession has led to a smaller economy, less activity and less energy consumption,” said Revis W. James, director of the Energy Technology Assessment Center at the Electric Power Research Institute, a utility consortium.
Electricity consumption had been growing at a rate of 1 percent to 1.5 percent a year, but the recession brought on the steepest drop in decades....
Of course, the recession will end one day, but the economy will look different when it does, experts say. By then, the United States will be further along in its multidecade trend away from energy-intensive industries and toward a service-based economy."...
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